Out Of Time

by Oldfield, Donna Marie

  “Here is fine,” Dylan said. “We’re still under the cover of the woods at this point, but it’s more out in the open as we get near the wall. Steer off the road and park amongst the trees if you can, so it’s hidden, then we’ll sneak up there on foot.”

  Scarlett did as she was told and made her way over the fallen leaves and grassy ground as best she could. “This will have to do,” she said. “I’m worried the wheels will get stuck if we go any further.”

  “That’s fine,” Dylan said as he stepped out of the car and stared towards the workhouse. “Let’s go.” Scarlett, Neelam and Jay got out of the car, then slowly followed Dylan towards the high, concrete wall.

  “It’s huge,” Scarlett said apprehensively, “and about a metre thick.”

  “You can do it,” Dylan said. “Look, it’s not solid, it’s made out of horizontal panels of concrete slabs. If you use all your strength, you’ll be able to pop one of those out, so we can all clamber through.”

  “Won’t they notice a huge chunk of concrete flying through the air?” Scarlett asked, nodding up at the security towers.

  “I can sense the guards from here,” Neelam said, “which means I can make them unaware of our presence. I’ll do the same whilst we make our way across the grounds, so there’s no need to worry.”

  “Thanks,” Scarlett muttered. “Just moving these huge blocks is a daunting enough prospect without having to worry about alerting those guys.” She took a step back and stared at the wall. It was divided into three-metre-wide sections and each one was made up of 10 horizontal panels that were a metre high. She glanced over the portion close to them – they all looked incredibly secure, so she paced down the wall a little further until she found one that looked a little loose. It was the second panel from the bottom and about the right height for them to crawl through.

  “This one,” Scarlett said. “I’m going to try to move this one.” She stared intently at the heavy panel and concentrated with all her might. Nothing. “Come on,” she urged. “MOVE!” The concrete block started trembling slightly. “Move NOW!” It gave way a little more before popping right out of the wall and crashing onto the floor behind.

  “Yes!” Scarlett said triumphantly. Then the higher-up panels all slotted down into its place, leaving a gap at the top instead of further down where she intended it to be. “Damnit! Why did that happen? We can’t get through that high gap. It’s nine metres off the ground.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dylan assured her. “Just knock out a few more panels, they’re looser now, so you should find it easier.”

  “Yeah right,” she thought. “Easy for you to say.” She turned back to the wall and stared at the top panel – she figured it made sense to knock that one out first and work her way down because if she went lower, they would only shuffle back down again. “Move!” she commanded and the stone flew straight out. “Move!” she yelled again with a determined wave of her hand. Another one fell. “Move, move, move!” she insisted and three more panels flew out one by one, leaving just four panels left, so the wall was now four metres high.

  “I could fly us over that one by one,” Dylan said.

  “No need,” Scarlett insisted as she knocked out the last four panels. “Now we can just walk through.” Dylan stared from the gap in the wall to Scarlett and back again. He was speechless.

  “Nice work, Scarlett,” Jay said. He put his hand up to high five her, then strolled through the hole she’d made.

  “Impressive,” Neelam said as she followed him. “Looks like you’re back at full strength.”

  “It certainly does,” Dylan said. He smiled at Scarlett. “Come on, we need to sneak across the yard, then get to the fire exit round the other side of the building.”

  The four teenagers stuck close together as they quietly tiptoed across the grounds. Even though Neelam was telepathically shielding them, Scarlett still felt hideously exposed – especially as the floodlights brightly lit every nook and cranny in the whole area. Her heart was pounding with every step they took.

  “We’ll get to the edge of the building first,” Dylan whispered, “then work our way round.”

  Soon, they were at the building, which was even more foreboding up close. Scarlett noticed there were no windows, which seemed weird, but was good news for them because it meant nobody would be looking out to spot them.

  “Be alert,” Dylan said. “It may be 5am in the morning, but you never know who might be lurking around out here. Stay close together and have your wits about you.”

  “Yes boss,” Jay laughed. Dylan gave him a silencing look, then led the way anti-clockwise around the building.

  “This place stinks,” Scarlett complained as she kicked an industrial-size powdered milk carton that was lying around. Next to it lay vegetable peelings, eggshells and other unidentifiable rubbish “Don’t they have any bins?”

  “Eeek!” Neelam squealed as a rat ran past her feet.

  “Sshhh,” Dylan whispered loudly. “Ignore the mess and concentrate on the task at hand.”

  “Yeah girls, stop being such, girls,” Jay said. He started to laugh, but another disapproving look from Dylan made him think twice. “Come on, let’s be quick about this.”

  “Watch out!” Neelam squealed.

  “I told you to be quiet...” Dylan started to say, then he saw what had startled her. A Detectobot was hovering directly in front of them.

  “Zap it!” Scarlett said.

  Dylan waved his hand to freeze it, just like he had done when he and Scarlett first met, but the Detectobot survived and sped at them.

  “What?” Dylan shouted. “But I… but that worked before.”

  Scarlett focused on the machine as hard as she could to throw it out of their way. It seemed to pause for a second and allowed them to run past, then it fired back into action stronger than ever and turned on them again.

  “Number 2541, detect!” It shouted. “Number 3274, detect! Number 2896, detect. Mode selected to neutralise. Ready to neutralise. Preparing to neutralise…”

  The Detectobot’s top half opened up to reveal a sophisticated laser gun. The machines had become a lot more advanced since their last encounter – no wonder they couldn’t beat it.

  Scarlett grabbed Dylan’s hand. “Try freezing it again,” she said. “Drown it, make it rain. Anything!”

  “Scarlett, it seems impervious to the freezing and I can’t make it rain. I don’t do that.”

  “Try!” she pleaded. Suddenly, it started raining, hailing and sleeting heavily all at once, but only in the spot above their robotic nemesis.

  “Malfunction...” the Detectobot groaned as hailstones the size of golf balls battered its laser gun. “Unknown power. Alien conditions. Cannot cope...” And then it exploded.

  “Nice one Dylan!” Jay said. “That was awesome. I didn’t know you could whip up wild weather like that. Nice work keeping the rest of us dry.”

  “I, er, I, well thanks,” Dylan muttered. He looked confused. “I had no idea I could do that and even with Scarlett suggesting that I try it, I can’t believe I managed it.”

  “Don’t complain,” Neelam said. “Our powers are always changing and growing, so it’s great that you have a new skill. Just in time.”

  “Yeah, I guess so, now let’s press on. The fire exit should be round the next corner.”

  The group soon reached the door they were looking for without running into any more obstacles along the way. “Well, here we are,” Dylan said. “Over to you, Scarlett.”

  “Allow me,” she said as she stepped forward and surveyed the fire door. She couldn’t see the other side, but she knew there must be a bar there that she could release to open it. She tried her best to picture the lever and imagined her mind lifting it up. The door swung open.

  “Oh my goodness,” Neelam said. “You’re a pro!”

  “Let’s get in quickly,” Dylan said, pushing them all in and closing the door behind him. However, the others could barely hear him over the noise of ma
chinery.

  “Look at this place,” Neelam whispered, in their heads this time, so they wouldn’t be heard.

  Before them was one huge open floor full of row upon row of exercise bikes – all being furiously pedalled by tired-looking workers. There must have been at least 1,000 of them.

  “What are they doing?” Jay asked.

  “Generating power by the looks of it,” Dylan said. “Look...” He pointed to a wall of computer screens close by, which appeared to be recording the power output of the cyclists in the building.

  Scarlett studied one of the screens, which said:

  Power generated per hour: 55,037W

  Service levels: 99%

  Demand met: 93%

  Alert! 7% more power needed to meet demand

  “Come on you imbeciles,” they heard a man yell as he cracked a whip in the air. “Pedal faster! We need more electricity in the East of England and you are letting us down. No one is having a break until we’ve reached ‘100% demand met’.”

  “I feel dizzy,” a girl who looked around 16 complained. She was very skinny and her clothes looked dirty and torn, while her wavy hair couldn’t have been styled in weeks.

  “I don’t care!” the stern man, who was wearing a smartly tailored grey uniform, shouted. “I said no stopping. You hear me?”

  “Yes...”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “That’s right, worker. Know your place. What are the rest of you staring at? Get back to work.” He stomped off towards the top end of the room, brandishing his whip about for effect.

  “This is horrible,” Scarlett said. “We have to help these poor people. They’re being treated like slaves.”

  “Not now,” Dylan said. “I say we get upstairs, tend to the super-power-experiment problem and find Lucy first, then help these people on the way out. We’ll blow the whole thing if we do it now. Any joy tracking Lucy, Neelam?”

  “Nope, maybe she’s on one of the upper floors. My powers won’t reach that far.”

  “OK, let’s head up there then. Can you keep masking us while we get to the stairs at the opposite side of the room?”

  Neelam nodded, then she and Dylan led the way as they weaved in and out of the machines that were so tightly packed into the workhouse. Scarlett felt like crying as she passed the workers by. They all looked so malnourished and mistreated. Many of them were unshaven and ungroomed and their clothes were dull and worn. It was the look on their faces that affected her the most – they looked so despondent, like their souls had been crushed and beaten out of them.

  “We have to free them as we leave,” she thought. “We can’t leave them here.”

  Once the group reached the stairs, they quietly opened the heavy door, then made their way up the steps to the first floor.

  “What’s here?” Jay asked. He pressed his face to the small window in the door that led out onto the floor. “Forget I asked,” he said with a look of horror on his face.

  “What is it?” Neelam said, taking a look for herself. Scarlett and Dylan looked at her inquisitively. “Another floor of slaves,” she said. “More bikes and some kind of huge wheel things they’re running round in. I don’t want to see anymore.”

  “Any sign of Lucy and Aaron?” Scarlett asked.

  Neelam looked in pain as she shook her head.

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah, it’s just hard work probing all these minds to find Lucy. There’s so much misery and sadness.” Neelam looked down at the floor then up again. “No time to think about that though. Let’s go up to the second floor and the dorms.”

  After climbing another two flights of stairs, Neelam telepathically searched for Lucy and her brother again. “Still nothing,” she said. “Let’s go to the next level and check out these laboratories.”

  However, as they reached Floor Three and pushed their way through the door, Neelam looked shocked.

  “Are you OK?” Dylan asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, but my powers won’t work here.”

  “Uh oh,” Jay said. “That means we’re visible to everyone.”

  “What happened?” Dylan enquired.

  “I don’t know, it must be Goulden, or his machinery at least. Remember how he stopped me reading his mind with some gizmo last time? Maybe he’s installed that technology on this whole floor.”

  “Could be... let’s hope that we aren’t all affected,” Scarlett said. She tried moving a box she saw on the floor. It worked. “My powers still work at least.”

  Dylan froze the same box. “Mine too.”

  Jay ran to the end of the corridor and back. “And mine. Sorry Neelam.”

  “That’s OK, I’m glad you lot are still OK. I’m just sorry I’m useless.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Scarlett said. “There’s a lot more to you than powers. Come on, those Holding Pens should be here on the right if I remember the map correctly.”

  She walked over towards a huge metal door and tried the handle. It was locked. “Well, it was worth a shot,” she shrugged. She stepped back and tried opening it telekinetically, but while the lock sounded like it clicked open, the door stayed firmly shut. Dylan kicked it. Twice. It still wouldn’t budge.

  “That’s weird,” Scarlett said. “Maybe there’s more than one lock.”

  Just as she was about to try the door again, they all heard a loud scream in a room behind them.

  “What was that?” Jay asked as he started to move towards the noise.

  “Wait Jay, it could be dangerous,” Dylan protested, but by the time he’d finished speaking, Jay had already dashed out of sight.

  Chapter 24

  Neelam, Scarlett and Dylan raced into the other side of the building after Jay and found him leaning over a teenage boy, who was lying defenceless on the floor.

  “It looks like Alex,” Dylan said as they got closer.

  “It is,” Neelam whispered. She rushed over to him.

  “Alex, Alex, wake up,” she urged.

  “I’ve been trying,” Jay said, “but he’s out cold. At least I hope that’s all it is.”

  Neelam took his pulse. “He’s alive, just unconscious. What should we do?”

  “Well, we can’t leave him here,” Dylan said. “No matter what we think of him.”

  “Urgggghhh,” Alex moaned.

  “I think he’s waking up,” she said. “Alex, what happened?”

  “Goulden,” he mumbled feebly, barely opening his eyes.

  “What happened, Alex?” Dylan asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I was following Goulden.”

  “He’s here? Now?” Scarlett asked.

  “Yeah... zapped me… hurts,” he said weakly before closing his eyes again.

  “I think we should split up,” Dylan said. “If Goulden’s here, we need to act fast. Scarlett and I will look for him – he must be somewhere on this side of Level Three if he just attacked Alex and this area is also where all the executive rooms are for VIPs like him. You and Jay stay with Alex and if he takes a turn for the worse, take him to a hospital.”

  Scarlett was touched by how caring Dylan was being, considering he hated Alex.

  Neelam nodded. “And if he takes a turn for the better, we’ll have another go at getting into those Holding Pens. Meet you over there if we don’t see you back here.”

  “OK,” Dylan said as he took Scarlett’s hand and led her in the opposite direction to which they had come from. “Take care.”

  “You OK with this?” he asked Scarlett as they left the others.

  “Of course. If we’re going to split up, I’m glad I’m with you.”

  “Me too.” He smiled. “Do you think Toshiko and co came here with Alex?”

  “Must have.”

  “I wonder what they’re up to.”

  “Same as us, I guess. They did know about this place – I stole the map off them remember.”

  “Oh yeah. Well, I guess we’d better keep an eye out for them
– both to make sure they’re OK and that they don’t attack us.”

  “This is getting even more complicated than I anticipated,” Scarlett said with a wry smile.

  “Doesn’t it always?” He stopped to open the door to a room they were passing. He peered inside. “No one in there,” he confirmed.

  Soon they had covered the whole wing without coming across a single soul.

  “This is the last room,” Dylan said as he grabbed the handle on another door. “I think we’ve searched the whole executives’ area now and there’s still no sign of Goulden.”

  “Maybe he’s headed to another part of the building or left completely,” Scarlett mused.

  “He must have,” he agreed. He stuck his head into the room. “What the...” Dylan yelped as he was dragged inside. Scarlett stuck her foot in the door to make sure she wasn’t left outside, then followed him in.

  “Hey!” she shouted as she saw a large, burly man in a police uniform punching Dylan hard in the stomach and around the head. “Get off him!” She flung her arm and shouted: “Move!” The policeman, who she now realised only looked about 19, went flying against the wall, hit it with a loud thunk and slid to the floor.

  “And stay down,” she yelled. The police officer was about 6 foot 2 and had a scarily heavy build – he was even bigger than the weightlifters she had seen on TV. Despite his size, he swiftly got on his knees, pulled himself back up, cracked his knuckles and ran at the two of them.

  “Uh oh,” Scarlett said as she leapt out of the way. She spotted a large table at the other side of the room. “Move!” she yelled, with a flourish of her arm. She didn’t really need to move her arms to make her powers work, but she found it helped her to focus. Sure enough, the table went soaring through the air towards their assailant and knocked him to the ground. Again, he got straight back up.

  “Man there is no beating you,” Scarlett thought.

  “Allow me,” Dylan said. Even though he was obviously struggling after being attacked, he used his powers to throw the man in the air and thud him back to the ground. “Now you try again.” Scarlett telekinetically threw him back in the air and to the ground, then Dylan did it again before it was her turn once more.